


Maybe he wasn't so bad after all

by bees_stories



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bar Fight, Car Wreck, Daddy Issues, Dean Has a Bad Day, Drunk Driving, Epiphany, Gen, Mental De-aging, hallucination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 01:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4858190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bees_stories/pseuds/bees_stories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has a really crappy day that's followed by an even worse night. When he crashes his car after a bar fight, he finds help from an unlikely source, and he has a belated epiphany about his father's parenting style.  Contains alcohol abuse and drunk driving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe he wasn't so bad after all

* * * 

The bourbon, despite the top shelf label, is cheap, cut-rate crap that burns hot down his gullet and hits his belly hard. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. The equally cheap beer spreads the fire to his veins, and Dean has to bow his head and shut his eyes against the burn.

But that's okay. Pain is good. Even the kind of pain that comes from getting drunk on ripoff booze. It helps him obliterate the sights he can't get out of his brain, blood and brains and bodies ripped out of their skins. It obliterates the smell of copper and death in a way that driving through miles of newly mowed hay fields with the windows rolled all the way down to let in the fresh country air, hasn't managed to accomplish. 

He finishes the beer and orders the same again. The bartender nods and sets him up without comment, sliding a fresh pair of glasses in front of him before moving down the bar to tend to another customer. Dean steels himself against the burn and then knocks it back. The second round doesn't go down any better than the first one had. If anything, it seems even harsher. Kerosene pretending to be Kentucky's finest. 

Dean glances up at the line of bottles lining the mirrored shelves behind the bar and briefly considers switching to tequila. But there's something to be said for the devil you know, and he and the brown demon have already begun to get acquainted, so he decides to stand pat, ordering a third round as the bartender drifts his direction again. 

"You okay, bud?" 

Standard bartender patter. The dude's not looking for his life story, he's just trying to gauge what kind of drunk Dean's likely to be. He looks up from his beer and replies, "Outstanding." Which, of course, is a bald-faced lie, because Dean has been beating his brains out on a case that is going nowhere, and what little progress he's made has been stymied by small town cops and their distrust of outsiders. Frankly, at this point in the game, he'd be more than willing to leave them to their string of inexplicable murders, except he hates skin walkers even more than Barney Fife wannabees with sticks up their asses. Even though he's about ninety percent sure that the skin walker has given him the slip, Dean knows he'll be at the police station bright and early, running through the evidence they've managed to accumulate and can't make sense of, trying to discern patterns of his own.

"Set me up again." 

The bartender gives him a dubious look, but when Dean flashes a twenty, he shrugs and complies. Despite the crappy booze and the overly carbonated beer he's tanking up on, Dean's stomach growls. He frowns, remembering the last time he ate was hours earlier when he'd inhaled a hot dog and coffee he'd bought from a Gas and Sip. He looks around the bar and sees that no one else has food. There's no plastic-y cheese covered nachos or neon orange colored hot wings to be had. There's not even any pickled eggs bobbing in a neglected jar, or a bowl of peanuts propping up the end of the bar. If he wants to eat, it's going to have to be somewhere else. He pushes up off the bar stool, tosses a handful of bills in the general vicinity of the bartender, and starts to make his exit. 

The cheap booze hits him all at once. Hard. It's the price he pays for drinking on an empty stomach. Dean wobbles dangerously. He has to plant his feet like he's forcing them through the worn oak planking, and grab onto the bar for support, his fingers clamping down hard on the resin-coated surface. He frowns and wonders if maybe the bartender has slipped him a mickey, doctoring his foul-tasting whiskey with shots of vodka, or maybe even something more insidious. In farming country ketamine would be the drug of choice; easy to obtain and simple to administer. It wouldn't be the first time in his experience that a dive bar turned out to be a clip joint when a stranger, such as himself, walked through its doors.

He pulls himself up straight and looks around to see if anyone has noticed, but the bartender has his back turned, and everyone else is too busy getting hammered to care. 

Carefully, putting one foot in front of the other, Dean walks away from the bar, and across the crowded room. He nearly makes it out the door, but then some moron, who is too busy checking out the action at the pool table to pay attention to where he's going, slams right into him, and gives Dean a beer bath. 

Dean sees red. After his craptastic day getting his last clean shirt soaked with beer is more than he can take. Without thinking, he cocks his arm back and decks the sonofabitch, sending him, and what's left of his lousy beer, straight to the floor. The guy goes down in a sprawl. When he looks up, his expression is bewildered. He can't figure out what the hell he's done to deserve the punch in the face.

The guy has friends. Big beefy John Deere hat-wearing friends with steroid boosted muscles that are inked heavily with skulls and snakes and other macho bullshit. They size him up, and they scent fresh meat. They circle Dean. He smiles back and shrugs innocently, like it was some other guy who cold-cocked their buddy, and he had nothing to do with it. 

The bruisers don't buy the hapless bystander act. They shift, like a well oiled machine, and attack. Hard, meaty fists slam into his face and shoulders. Dean doesn't have time or space to do more than duck and block and wish for the pistol he'd left locked up safely in the glove compartment. He hadn't expected trouble from the locals. All he'd wanted to do is get drunk in peace. 

One of the bruisers raises a pool cue, taking aim at Dean's skull. Finally catching a break instead of a punch, Dean ducks underneath the blow with surprising dexterity, considering how alcohol-hammered and punch drunk he is, yanks the cue out of the guy's meaty fist, and swings it hard. He clocks the guy across the knees and follows it with a hard thump across his shoulders. 

The sudden reverse of odds buys Dean a few crucial and precious seconds. He waves the cue around as he charges for the door, challenging any other comers, and because his blood is up, he is oddly disappointed there are no more takers. Now that he's got a little more control of the situation, a fight doesn't seem like such a bad idea. It would have been a way to burn off the frustration from his shitty day. But no one is interested in taking him on. The beer-guy's friends have made their point, and they probably want to maintain the good will of the bartender. Dean growls at the pair on the floor before stalking outside, flinging the pool cue away into the parking lot when he realizes it is still clutched in his hand. In a dim, distant sort of way, he registers it clattering against something metal as it falls.

The Impala is nowhere to be seen. Dean halts, confused, as he scans the rows of pickup trucks and SUVs. Finally, he remembers that the water pump had gone south earlier in the day, and he'd been forced to leave the car back at his motel until the auto shop could source a replacement. He looks down at the unfamiliar key in his hand, and recalls it belongs to the nondescript economy sedan parked under the lamp post. 

It's not Baby, but it will have to do. Tired, and wanting nothing more than to get something to eat and then put his head down and forget the day, Dean burns rubber as he pulls out of the parking lot, spraying gravel behind him as he stomps down on the accelerator and roars down the long, dark road. 

For an econobox the car has pretty good pick up, but it otherwise handles like a pig, Which doesn't matter as long as the road is straight and flat. On a fresh asphalt surface, like the one that passes as the area's main thoroughfare, the ungainly car practically floats. The smooth ride almost makes up for the car's embarrassing butt ugliness. Dean coasts along, in a drunken haze, ignoring everything but the view directly in front of the big car.

Yellow signs are posted at intervals. Dean's vision is too blurry to read them, even if they weren't flying by at forty miles over the speed limit in a tumble of indistinct letters. He doesn't bother to try.

The barrier blocking the road comes as a complete shock. It's way too late to do anything, but Dean tries anyway. He plants both feet on the brake pedal and stomps down hard. The brakes lock, and he goes into a skid. Suddenly the crap handling is an issue. He turns into the skid, and the car smashes through the barrier sideways.

Now Dean and the econobox are flying for real. They float in space for a long, long moment, and then gravity catches up with them and they fall, hard and fast, slamming into the ground with a sick thump.

Dean is too tired to fight, even if he gave a damn, and after the day, the week, the month, the year he has had, he doesn't even put up a token effort. The airbag deploys, smacking him in the face and chest as it inflates. It knocks whatever is left of his consciousness out of his skull. 

Darkness claim him. It's an inky black nothingness, and Dean goes out like a light. 

When he comes to it's about a million years later. Something is prodding him in the arm. He tries to wave it away, but whatever it is, it's persistent. Wearily, Dean opens his eyes and tries to blink the world back into focus. 

The car is parked next to a tree. There's a branch poking through the window. But that's not the weird thing. Dean's father is standing next to the car, peering into the window with a pissed off expression on his face. 

Dean stares back, not believing his eyes. His dad is dead. Has been for ages. Dead and gone to Hell. Or so he had been gleefully informed by Azazel.  

Maybe one of those punches to the head broke something important. Or maybe there had been something in his drink after all, and he's hallucinating. But his dad looks too damn real to be anything but the genuine article. He's not see through, or glowing. He's just standing there with a grim look on his face. It's the look that says 'duck and cover' because John is about to open a can of whoop ass.

It's a look Dean knows well. 

Pieces slot together in Dean's alcohol-soaked brain. He should hurts like hell, all over, but he doesn't. He is, as Pink Floyd once put it, 'comfortably numb'. There's smoke pouring out from under the hood of the car. A piece of the barrier comes sliding down over the windshield and then slips over the fender, landing with a crunch against what sounds like leaves. And his body is trapped behind the wheel by the damned airbag.

"I'm dead," Dean says to his dad. "Aren't I." 

Dad folds his arms across his chest and instantly Dean feels like he's about twelve. He's screwed up. Royally. Failed. Big time. He sucks in a breath through bruised lungs and abused ribs, and suddenly he's not numb anymore. Pain lances through his body as he tries to sit up straighter in his seat because when Dad gets that look on his face then Dean damn well better be at attention, even if he is sitting down, otherwise there _will_ be hell to pay. 

"Get out of the car." 

Dad doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't have to. Dean knows the consequences of disobeying. He can feel the sting of past punishments. The smack of a leather belt against his bare ass. The ring of a slap as it connects with his cheek. "Yes, sir." Dean answers promptly, as he's been taught. He deliberately makes his tone gruff. More man-like. Even though it's been years since his voice cracked, and he doesn't have to try anymore. 

He tugs on the door latch. It sticks. Throwing his shoulder against the frame sends an electric shock of pain through his body, but it does the trick. Dean gasps, and the door opens with a screech of bent metal. He tries to get out, but the air bag and the seat belt hold him in place. Dad presses his lips together, noting Dean's stupid oversight. With trembling fingers, Dean gets the buckle to unlatch and he manages to worm his way out of the car. Everything lurches sideways and Dean has to grip the door's frame for support. His head aches. His body hurts everywhere. He tries to make an assessment, but can't. All he can think about is the presence of his father and what that means. 

"Get your gear." 

Dean has to process the order. Wind it backwards and play the words over one at a time. Why would he need his stuff if he's dead and going to Hell?

"Move." 

His twelve year old self reacts, shuffling on concrete feet to the back of the car to slot the key in the keyhole with fingers that feel ten sizes too big for his hands. It takes him multiple tries, but finally he pops the trunk and removes the two bags, one filled with bloody and gore covered clothes, and one stuffed with his weapons. He slings them over his back, stifling a groan of pain as they collide with his bruised and battered muscles.

"Atten_tion!" Dad snaps. 

Dean straightens too fast. He overcompensates and nearly falls over. His stomach roils and he has to swallow hard. Puking on his shoes won't go over well. He knows that from experience. He comes to attention a second time, much more carefully, and waits for his father to issue new orders. 

"Double time. March!" 

Dean clamps his lips over the whiny cry of _Dad!_ , not understanding why his father has to be such a hard ass all the damn time. Can't he see how hurt his son is? How it costs him to stand on his feet, let alone walk? Why can't he show some goddamn compassion, just this once?

Dean chokes on the rant. He knows what's expected of him, and he knows the consequences that come with failure. He puts one foot in front of the other and then does it again, and again. His father falls in next to him, striding along easily. For a dead guy he's in good shape. He doesn't even breathe heavily as he and Dean clamber up the steep incline on the opposite side of the ravine. 

They pause at the top. There's the sound of cars in the distance. The ones that were smart enough to follow the detour. They're on the opposite side of a thick wall of trees. If Dean broke cover, he could hitch a lift, but in his present condition it's just as likely that any car that saw him would keep right on driving by.

"Dad knows best," Dean thinks to himself, even though he's pretty sure that the accident has messed with his head and his father can't possibly be real. But his doubt isn't strong enough to risk disobedience. He can't break the habit of a lifetime and free himself of the compulsion to follow his father's orders. Old habits die hard. Dean knows when his father gets that look on his face, and uses that tone of voice, as much as he hates it, he will always be a child who is desperate to win his father's approval. At times like these, he wonders, even with everything he's done, all the trials he's faced, if he'll ever really be a man. 

They walk on, hiking steadily through the wood. The night deepens. The car sounds diminish. Little by little, the alcoholic haze burns away, and even though he aches painfully, and the landscape keeps changing without him having clear memories of passing through it – which probably means he has a concussion – Dean feels like his head is starting to clear. The enforced march, as much as he resents it, has done him some good. Instead of going stiff, his muscles have become limber. Instead of puking it up, the alcohol he ingested it is being sweated out his pores. When he wipes his face, Dean can smell cheap whiskey and beer in his perspiration. His stomach growls again. Even though he still has bouts of nausea, he is ravenously hungry, and he still wants something to eat. 

He hears new traffic noises. When he looks through a break in the trees he sees the road that passes his motel. With a frown, he pauses, even though his father hasn't called a halt. Come to think of it, Dean doesn't remember seeing his father at all for the last little while. He peers into the night, searching the pathway, but sees nothing. 

"Dad?" He calls out tentatively at first and then more loudly. "Dad? Where are you?" 

Dean gets no reply. He puts a hand to his forehead and shuts his eyes, taking a minute to catch his breath and take stock of the situation. The bar was on the outskirts of town, a good six or seven miles from the motel. After the fight and then the accident, as bruised and beaten up as he was, he should have never been able to cover that kind of distance. But there he is, still on his feet. Dean clears his throat, straightens his shoulders, and marches the last few hundred feet. He makes a fast pass through the Gas and Sip, using cash to buy bottles of soda and sports drinks and a couple of mystery meat burritos. He keeps his head down, and doesn't make eye contact with the cashier.

It's only another couple of hundred feet from the Gas and Sip to his motel room. Dean lets himself in with a quiet sigh. He drops his gear onto the floor, and then collapses onto the bed with his bag of food still clutched in his fist. He stares up at the ceiling, feeling absolutely ancient. The evening is catching up with him all at once, sucking the energy from his limbs, and leaving him feeling limp and shaken. He knows he should get off the bed, strip down, and assess his injuries, but he can't move. 

The purple sports drink he bought has a pull up top. He struggles getting the bottle from the bag, and then the top into a dispensing position. He manages to squeeze some of the vaguely berry flavored liquid into his mouth without spilling it down his front. It tastes like crap, because somewhere during the evening he'd bitten his tongue and cut the inside of his mouth, and there's still the faint copper taste of blood clinging to his palate. But the sports drink has vitamins and electrolytes and things that will help him get back on his feet, so he takes another careful squirt of the stuff and kills the taste with mystery meat burrito, repeating the same fumbling process with the bag and the wrapper until he gets a decent;y sized bite.

He chews, thoughtfully. In a lifetime filled with strange and generally hostile events, seeing his father again was weirdly comforting, even if John was an ass during the visitation. But as Dean takes another bite and washes it down carefully so he doesn't choke, it occurs to him that a bunch of lovey dovey hand-holding would have been about as useful as lipstick on a pig. Where, on the other hand, Dad's drill sergeant routine had probably both saved his life and kept him out of the slammer. He'd been way over the limit when he'd roared out of the parking lot. It was stupid, and it was dangerous, and he was lucky that no one, other than himself, the barrier, and the car he'd rented in the name of Phil Anselmo, had been hurt. 

Huh, Dean thinks as he sucks down more berry drink. Maybe his father hadn't been such an ass after all. His eyes well up. He pushes the back of his hand over his face, and then stares up at the ceiling again, tears still blurring his vision. As much as he hated and resented his father when he was alive, he loved him too, and, in his weaker moments, he likes to think that somehow his father made his way to Heaven rather than facing the punishments of Hell.

"Thanks, Dad," He speaks softly, almost prayerfully. "for watching out for me."

end


End file.
